Phl, Indonesian fans: Great job, Azkals!

JAKARTA – For a team that has played beyond expectations, there’s not much of a difference be­tween winning and losing.

The Philippine football team, known as the Azkals, dropped another 1-0 defeat to Indonesia Sunday evening, but as they left the Bung Karno Stadium, they were cheered on by the Indonesian fans.

Girls blew kisses while the male fans, who looked rabid and unruly before and during the game, flashed the thumbs-up sign as the bus car­rying the visitors passed them by. Some flashed the peace sign.

The Filipinos smiled back from inside the bus as it crawled its way out of the massive stadium that was packed with 85,000 fans for the close of the semifinals of the Asean Football Federation Suzuki Cup.

“They’re now smiling at us. I think we have earned their respect. This is what football is all about,” said Philippine team head coach Simon Mc­Menemy who occupied the front seat of the bus.

“Just look at them. They all love us now,” he added.

There was plenty of mutual respect in the end.

The moment the Filipino players jumped off the bus, they were mobbed by their Indonesian fans, mostly female, who had waited for their arrival at the Sultan Hotel.

Goalie Neil Etheridge was the most sought after, and girls were seen hugging the 6-foot-3 Fulham goalie as they took pictures with him. They shrieked at the sight of the player whose mother hails from Tarlac.

James Younghusband and Rob Gier were just as popular to Indonesian fans. On the hotel lobby, fans surrounded them, and it took them a while before they could get inside the elevator.

Etheridge had to beg before the fans so he could leave, freshen up in his room, and have dinner with the team in one of the hotel’s function rooms. Close to midnight, they went out to party in a trendy club.

The Azkals left Jakarta yesterday morning and headed back to Manila via Singapore. Again, they are expected to be treated as heroes the moment they step out of the plane.

The Fil-foreign players, however, won’t be there long, needing to catch the next flight to Europe where most of them are based. Gier, however, might have to stay because her Filipina mother had con­tacted dengue here in Jakarta.

Then it will be back to the drawing board, with a Challenge Cup matchup against Mongolia sched­uled in February, then the qualifiers for the 2012 London Olympics and the Jakarta Southeast Asian Games next December.

McMenemy said all the experience in this Suzuki Cup, which carried the team to Laos and Vietnam all the way to this soccer-crazy nation of 230 million people, should make the Azkals proud.

“The boys will learn a lot from this. We will be back to fight another day,” he said.

“I think most of the players will be disappointed in the next half hour,” McMenemy said inside the dressing room, shortly after the match. “And then they will sit down and think about where they’ve come from. The journey that we’ve been on. And they’ve got to look at it with pride. Where we came from is phenomenal.”

McMenemy took his hat off to Indonesia which will play Malaysia in the home-and-away finals on Dec. 26 (in Kuala Lumpur) and Dec. 29 (here in Jakarta).

“We knew that Indonesia was very good and it was difficult for us. But we don’t really have a wealth of talent available to us. We worked re­ally hard to play to the strength of the players but sometimes when you need that little extra it’s not just there. But we did very well against them,” he added.

McMenemy said the Indonesian team manager came up to him after the match, and said the Phil­ippines was probably the second-best team in the tournament, considering that in two games Indo­nesia only managed two goals.

“And it was coming from the guys who will probably win it. We’ve caused them problems. At the start all we wanted to be was to be competitive. I think the boys need to be very proud of this,” said the British coach.

McMenemy said Cristian Gonzales’ goal very late in the first half “knocked the wind out of our sails.”

His counterpart, Alfred Riedl, said it got a little scary playing the Philippines in the second match of the semis.

“I think this sort of game is not good for weak nerves,” the Austrian coach said. “Our opponents made it very difficult for us to win the match today. They had a lot of set plays from throw-ins and cor­ners and each time it was very dangerous for us.

“In the second half, we could see our players get­ting nervous. The Philippines were getting the ball into box and they made things very dangerous for us.”

Yes, the Azkals made it difficult for the mighty Indons, and for that they should be proud.